The half century which ended at the Treaty of Utrecht had been a formative and decisive period in the history of world trade. An analysis of the structure of seaborne commerce in the mid-seventeenth century would have revealed that it was preponderantly European in character and that a large part of the total volume was handled by the Dutch. The prosperity of Amsterdam derived primarily from the exchange of bulk commodities from northern Europe—timber, naval stores, and corn—against the produce of southern and western Europe—the salt of Biscay, the wool and silver of Spain, the herrings caught by Dutch fishermen off the British coasts, the wines and textiles of the Mediterranean. On the firm foundation of these bulk trades the Dutch had built up a vast entrepôt trade, served by a merchant fleet which was calculated in one contemporary estimate to be double that of England and nine times that of France. To this entrepôt were drawn other commodities—the cloths of England and France in particular—as well as an increasing flow of colonial wares—the spices brought from the East by the Dutch East India Company, and the tobacco, sugar and dyes of the Caribbean. Throughout the century an economic organisation was steadily built up to deal with the unprecedented scope and variety of the entrepôt trade. The Bourse, a central banking system, and a money-market together constituted its financial apparatus. The merchants themselves were divided into broad groups corresponding to the nature of their operations. The so-called ‘Second-Hand’ merchants specialised in dealings in imported goods which they stored until they were sold, sorted and graded them, or arranged for them to be processed or refined by local industries.

The original Cambridge Modern History, to which the present series of volumes is the successor, was planned by the first Lord Acton in the year 1896, and its publication was completed when the atlas volume appeared in 1912. It has been familiar ever since as a standard work, both a book of reference and a book to read, and it was the most influential survey in the English language of the history of the five previous centuries as they appeared to the scholars of that time. In British universities history, as a subject for examinations, was then attracting considerable, and growing, numbers of candidates. The same interest spread downwards into the schools and outwards through the ranks of educated men and women, bringing with it a demand for historical books and for new kinds of historical books. This change in the content of education was due to many changes in the public mind. One body of educational reformers promoted the teaching of history, while another promoted that of natural science, as alternatives to the more established subjects, especially the Greek and Latin classics; but the propaganda within the educational world echoed opinions which were current outside it. There was a utilitarian demand for more knowledge of history, appropriate enough at a time when British governments were assuming new functions at home and becoming more closely involved in international politics, so that the public had to discuss many issues which could scarcely be explained except in their historical setting.

In the early eighteenth century the western Mediterranean and Italy were dominated by Spain, where the new Bourbon dynasty, galvanised into activity by the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese, achieved a remarkable revival. From 1714, when she arrived in Spain as the second wife of Philip V, till 1746, when the death of her husband removed her from the centre of Spanish political life, Elizabeth and a series of able advisers acted with an energy and daring that gave Spain the initiative in the diplomatic negotiations affecting the Mediterranean region. Because of her family connections with Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany Elizabeth's ambitions were focused on those territories, and Italy was thus affected by the newly revived Spanish diplomacy. Portugal, on the contrary, though it gave a queen to the second effective Bourbon king of Spain, was little concerned in the Mediterranean diplomacy of the period. Portugal was satisfied to have regained her independence. Her colony of Brazil was providing her with a very large income and until 1750 she was content to enjoy independence and prosperity, taking very little part in European diplomacy and making very little contribution to European civilisation. After that date, with the advent of Pombal, Portugal suddenly outstripped Spain in reforming activity.

It was a very remarkable achievement by Elizabeth Farnese and her husband's chief ministers to gain the diplomatic initiative for Spain in the early eighteenth century, for at the end of the reign of Charles II Spain's economic resources had been in a state of almost total ruin. In 1692 the Crown had for the third time declared itself bankrupt although during the seventeenth century the weight of taxation had been increased considerably. The alcabala tax on all sales had been increased to 11 per cent in 1639 and to 14 per cent in 1663.

The settlements signed in Utrecht left Spanish America intact, but there were three main causes of dispute between the European Powers in the Caribbean. The first was between Spain and the rest, arising from the determination of the Spaniards to uphold a strict monopoly of the trade of their own possessions, and to take all necessary measures to defend the monopoly against other maritime traders. English, French, Dutch and Danes, on the other hand, were equally determined to break into the monopoly, either by extracting concessions from the Spanish Government, or by smuggling, or by a combination of the two. It is surprising that open conflict was not more frequent. The obvious inability of the Spaniards to maintain their monopoly in its entirely gave rise to the second dispute; that between the other Caribbean Powers over which of them should profit by Spain's commercial weakness. In this dispute England and France were the chief contenders, and their distrust of one another partly explains why neither of them quarrelled seriously with Spain for a generation. England and France were the principal rivals also in the third dispute, or group of disputes, over the possession of West Indian islands not occupied by Spaniards.

The immense importance attached to these disputes throughout the eighteenth century is at first sight hard to explain. The wealth of Spanish America was traditionally exaggerated, of course, and when buccaneering ceased to be a semi-respectable profession, trade seemed the only obvious way of securing a share of that wealth.

This picture of the art of war and the social foundations of the armed forces in the eighteenth century has been drawn from a study of the conditions in England, France, and Prussia: conditions in the Austrian, Russian and other armies, though different in detail, were not different in essence.

A note of leisure characterised eighteenth-century warfare, both on land and at sea, until the Revolutionary wars, first of America, then of France, introduced a sense of energy such as the preceding years had never known, and began that ideological warfare characteristic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whereas in modern times the function of generals is to win campaigns by decisive battles, in the eighteenth century few would have questioned a saying of the great duke of Alva, quoted with approval by Lord Hardwicke to the duke of Newcastle in September 1760: ‘It is the business of a general always to get the better of his enemy, but not always to fight, and if he can do his business without fighting, so much the better.’

At sea, Clarendon's views in his verdict on Blake, written in the preceding century, also still held good. Blake, according to Clarendon, was ‘the first man that declin'd the old track…and despised those rules which had been long in practice, to keep his ship and his men out of danger; which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection; as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come home again’. Armies and navies were expensive necessities for the limited resources of eighteenth-century governments; military forces and ships represented a heavy investment in time and money, and if lost in action could not be easily replaced.

The period of Italian art with which these pages are concerned is usually called ‘High Renaissance’. In the course of the fifteenth century a long chain of ‘Early Renaissance’ artists, mainly of Florentine descent, had concentrated on a visual as well as theoretical conquest of nature. Their work formed the basis for a great idealistic style which began to emerge from about 1490 onwards and was nearing its end at the time of Raphael's death in 1520. It was given fullest expression during the decade 1500 to 1510, and the names of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Giorgione and Titian, round which legions of minor stars of considerable brilliance revolve, indicate its climax. Modern interpreters have excellently analysed the truly classical qualities of this style which combines, like Greek art of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., a spiritual and formal dignity, harmony and equipoise never before or after equalled in the history of post-classical art. It is easier to describe this phenomenon than to explain it; nor can an explanation be offered here. But while older writers regarded it mainly and too simply as a revival of the pagan art of antiquity, more recent studies have begun to throw light on the complexities of the style by investigating the intentions of its creators. In following this line of approach, stylistic appreciations, biographical details and chronology have on the whole been dispensed with in what follows.

Renaissance architecture is usually described as a ‘rebirth’ of ancient architecture. This statement finds support in the writings of contemporary architects themselves, who all professed that they were returning to the ‘ancient manner of building’, after a long period of decline. However, if one compares a Roman temple with the highest class of centrally-planned Renaissance church such as Bramante's design for St Peter's (1505), S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi (1508 ff.), perhaps also designed by him, or Antonio da Sangallo's Madonna di S. Biagio at Montepulciano (1518 ff.), it needs real sophistication to discover points of contact between these buildings.

It was not strange that the unexpected death of Charles VI in October 1740 led to a war. Though the Pragmatic Sanction had been guaranteed by most European Powers, respect for treaties seemed an inadequate safeguard of a State that was ill-prepared to resist aggression. Maria Theresa inherited an empty treasury and a weak and demoralised army. Her father's ministers, whom she continued in office, were old and incompetent. She herself had received no political training, and her husband Francis was an unpopular mediocrity. What made her position worse was that she could not count on the loyalty of her subjects. Many of the nobles in Austria and Bohemia were ready to submit to a rival claimant, Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria. The Magyar nobility appeared more likely to be eager to weaken Habsburg authority in Hungary than to defend Maria Theresa. Charles Albert, on his part, had made no secret of his intention to claim to be the heir of Charles VI; bad though that claim was, he genuinely believed in it. But by himself he could do nothing: he was in debt; his forces were weak; his generals and ministers incapable. His dependence was on French support, and of that he had good hope.

By a treaty made in 1727 France had pledged herself to support such just claims as the elector might have to any of the Habsburg dominions on the death of Charles VI without male heirs. In 1735, however, France had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction; but it could be contended that this guarantee was without prejudice to the right of a third party, and this should have been realised in Vienna, since during Charles's last years France had proffered, though without response, her good offices for a settlement of the Bavarian claim.

The War of the Spanish Succession and the Peace of 1713 showed how negligible in the common political concerns of Europe the Papacy had become. In Sicily and Sardinia territories which the popes had long claimed as their fiefs were disposed of without reference to Rome. The Treaty of Utrecht registered a great increase in the power of Britain, head of the Protestant interest. Every growth in the strength of Prussia meant extra weight on the Protestant side. The extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs was in its political consequences unfavourable to the Holy See. The Most Catholic King, the Most Christian King, the Holy Roman Emperor, even the Most Faithful King of Portugal, decorated with this title only in 1748, seemed to have but cupboard love for their Church. They were all interested that no one should be made pope who might be too independent, or under hostile influence.

In these circumstances, another Gregory VII, or another Innocent III, was hardly to be expected. Clement XI (1700–21) was ‘timorous and undecided’. Innocent XIII (1721–4) owed his election partly to his great age, as the princes were determined that the long pontificate of Clement XI should not be repeated by another begun by a young man. Old, ill, and difficult of access, so far from emulating his thirteenth-century namesake, he maintained only a respectable level of diplomatic competence. The pious Orsini, the Dominican Benedict XIII (1724–30), was an austere and exacting ritualist, but administratively gullible and incompetent. Clement XII (1730–40), a Corsini, an experienced curial administrator and good with money, had first to undo much that Benedict XIII had done, whom he as a cardinal had steadily opposed; or that Benedict XIII had permitted to be done, by corrupt favourites like the cardinal Coscia, who paid for his misdeeds until the next conclave with seven years in the Castel Sant' Angelo.

One of the many fruits of national activity in Spain during the age of Ferdinand and Isabella was a new and widespread stimulus to the arts. If by European standards Spanish art of the period under consideration was only of minor importance, it was in many respects distinctive in character and it was to have a far-reaching effect in Spain's possessions in the New World. Whilst artistic production was still largely religious in purpose, royal patronage now played a major role in fostering it. Isabella herself built and endowed monasteries, churches and public institutions; the yoke and arrows, emblem of the Catholic sovereigns, and their escutcheon appear as decorative motifs on her buildings as they do in the margins of her manuscripts. Moreover, by adorning her residences with tapestries and paintings, mostly acquired from abroad, Isabella laid the foundations of the Spanish royal collection. The other chief patrons of art were the nobles and rich and powerful prelates, such as the Mendozas, Fonseca and Jiménez, who built palaces, chapels, hospitals and universities and followed the royal fashion for having themselves commemorated by monumental tombs. Newly acquired wealth and power nourished a taste for lavish decoration, inspired by the example of the Moors, in which the minor arts—woodwork, goldsmith's work, ironwork, etc.—played an important part.

Until the end of the fifteenth century Spanish art continued to be governed by northern influence which survived, moreover, well into the sixteenth century, when the style chosen for the cathedrals of Salamanca and Segovia was still pure Gothic. Echoes of the Italian Quattrocento first appeared in painting and sculpture during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but they were confined for the most part to architectural features and ornamental details, which modified rather than transformed the prevailing Hispano-Flemish and Gothic styles.

The unconfirmed news of the death of Duke Charles of Burgundy at the battle of Nancy (5 January 1477) created confusion in the Netherlands, restive at the cost of his wars. On 11 January 1477 Charles's widow Margaret of York and Mary, his only child, summoned the Estates General to Ghent. A fresh army had to be raised for defence against France; and if the duke was dead, as was the case despite contrary rumours, Mary had to be admitted as his heir by the provincial estates in each of the territories that composed the Burgundian Netherlands.

The forthcoming assembly of the Estates General was contemplated with misgivings at court, for in 1476 they had bitterly attacked ducal policy, and in summoning the present meeting relief from outstanding taxation was at once promised. Nevertheless, the general, unlike the territorial, estates were founded not on local custom but on the the institution of Duke Philip le Bon; and they had, up to the death of Duke Charles, served the duke's prerogative more than his subjects' liberties.

On 3 February Mary addressed at Ghent the estates, which, by recognising her as heir in all her father's lands, preserved the cohesion of the Netherlands; but they asked that she should grant ‘certain general articles’. The Grand Privilege is the monument to the estates of 1477. To prevent the prince from pursuing a policy, domestic or foreign, other than one which satisfied each of his territories, it transferred to the estates, both general and local, the right to assemble themselves without summons.

The year 1492 was an annus mirabilis for Spain. Granada was taken and the eight centuries of war with the Moslems brought to an end. The Jews were expelled from Spain, and the New World was discovered. Castile, which all through the Middle Ages had been secluded in the centre of the peninsula, suddenly emerged as a world Power. The rise of Castile was rather a matter of luck and accident than of thoughtful planning. But when opportunities came the Castilians rose to the occasion and seized them as successfully as they could, the chief limitation being the economic factor. Fate put enormous wealth into the hands of a nation with high ambitions and lofty ideals, but with little economic sense. No wonder the great empire which emerged was beset with financial problems. The real wonder is that it lasted so long.

The population in the peninsula under the Crown of Castile was not large. A count taken for military purposes in 1482 gave a total of 7,500,000. But the count was very rough and the figure seems much too high. Another count, taken in 1530 for tax purposes, gave only 3,433,000, but this did not include Galicia (perhaps with 600,000 people) or the kingdoms of Granada and Murcia, also densely populated. A third tax-count in 1541 gave about 6,272,000. Considering that 1530–70 was probably a peak period, the figure for 1482 ought to be much lower than for 1541, but should probably be over 4,500,000. As for the states of the Crown of Aragon, the approximate figures are: Aragon 270,000 (1495), Valencia 270,000 (1510) and Catalonia 307,000 (1512).

The eighteenth century was to be the age of the Enlightenment, but already before the seventeenth century had closed the prototypes of all the weapons in its armoury had been created and tested. Of the new thought of the seventeenth century Paul Hazard has written, ‘Total, imperious and profound, it prepared in its turn, even before the seventeenth century was completed, almost the whole of the eighteenth century.’ The great battle of ideas took place before 1715, and even before 1700.

Religion was the main citadel of orthodox thought, and the grand strategy of the attack on it had already been laid down by the English deists before 1715. A handful of extremists, such as Anthony Collins, moved beyond deism and repudiated religion altogether; but the latitudinarian divines of the Church of England had themselves gone so far towards the acceptance of rational religion that the deistic controversy died down in England for lack of opposition. Meanwhile the deistic and free-thinking writings of England were being introduced into France, where they were to acquire a new lease of life. Though French writers in the first half of the century handled the subject of religion with caution, their treatment concealed a more deep-seated hostility than existed across the Channel. When deism emerged into the open in France with the writings of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes, it had lost its theological associations and become a loose formula, merely retained as a sanction for politics and morals, and a defence against the charge of atheism.

Early eighteenth-century society, as mirrored by Saint Simon and Lord Harvey, by the family papers of the Russells or the Wyndhams, by the correspondence of the duke of Berwick or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, seemed predominantly aristocratic and French. This impression is supported by castles in Sweden and palaces in and around Vienna, by portraits and libraries and famous collections of porcelain in England and in Russia. However, the impression is rather different if one considers Fleet Street, Liverpool and Bristol rather than St James's, Welbeck and Woburn; Rennes and Marseilles rather than Versailles; or Hamburg and Frankfurt-am-Main rather than Potsdam, Karlsruhe and Mannheim. It then appears that, even in the first half of the eighteenth century, economic forces were already in operation which tended to make the urban middle class increasingly numerous and powerful, and that French ideas and fashions were already being challenged from England, the German cities and even from the non-European world.

The social prestige of the aristocrats in the early eighteenth century was, however, undoubtedly very great. In most countries high office in the army, at court and in the diplomatic service was filled almost exclusively by members of that order. In most of Europe the aristocrats were marked off from the third estate by the right to display armorial bearings, as for example on the panels of their carriages, or, as in Spain, carved conspicuously over the main entrance to a town house. In most countries, though here the practice in England was peculiar, all descendants of aristocrats were still further differentiated from other people by the hereditary use of a title.

In Russia, a new phase began with the defeat of Sweden at Poltava in 1709. The changes made by Peter the Great before that battle had been tentative and makeshift, dictated mostly by the immediate needs of war. When his victory at Poltava had freed Russia from the threat of invasion, he launched a programme of premeditated and consistent reforms, from which all his most enduring achievements emerged.

In the days of Peter the Great the chief source of Russia's wealth was her forests. The fertile steppe land of the south had not yet been brought under the plough. The spearhead of the southward colonisation movement was formed by the Don Cossacks, most of them deserters from the army, dissenters escaping persecution, or runaway peasants, all of whom despised the plough and lived a life of plunder along the rivers. In central Muscovy, which was the main agricultural area of Russia, some peasants continued the practice of burning tracts of forest, sowing their crops on the ashen soil for thirty to forty years and then moving off to repeat the process elsewhere. Even where the population was more permanent the peasants were reluctant to enrich the soil because their strips of land were redistributed every seven to twelve years. Most peasants used a light wooden plough with an iron share, but some still preferred a primitive hook plough that had been used in Russia for 700 years. Crops were harvested with the sickle in spite of Peter's efforts to introduce the scythe. Rye was the main crop in central Russia, but Peter induced the Baltic landowners to produce flax and hemp for export.

In 1713 and 1714 eleven separate treaties of peace almost brought the War of the Spanish Succession to an end. They left the Emperor and the king of Spain still at war, but large-scale hostilities were over and most of the belligerents had been able to reach a satisfactory settlement. The Spanish possessions were divided. Philip V, the grandson of Louis XIV, was recognised as king of Spain in spite of the disapproval of the Protestant Powers and of the Emperor; but he had to resign his claims to the throne of France, and he was not allowed to inherit the empire of Charles II in its entirety. Philip V received Spain and Spanish America, but the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, Mantua, Sardinia and the Spanish ports in Tuscany went to the Emperor Charles VI. Sicily went for a few years to the duke of Savoy.

In addition many other problems besides the division of the territories of the Spanish Habsburgs were settled by the peace treaties of 1713–14. In the treaty concluded between England and France the claim of the Hanoverians to the throne of England was also recognised. Implicitly this gave recognition to the theory of civil contract, and this concept was given further validity by the provisions that the arrangements for the successions to the thrones of France and of Spain were to be officially registered by the Parlement and by the Cortes respectively. The French diplomats warned their English colleagues that such an attempt to regulate the succession was not valid in French law; that the right to rule was derived from God, and that, should the death of the infant French prince leave the throne vacant, Philip V could not be bound by his renunciation but must mount the throne to which God had called him; but they did, at last, accept the provisions in public law which professed to regulate the succession by man-made agreements.

After the long period of strife brought about by the Great Schism, the Church had at last become reunited. Rallying round Nicholas V (1449), it seemed as though, in a less troubled atmosphere, it would now pursue its unchanging ideal. There resounded once more the two words which symbolised its twin aspirations: at home, reform; abroad, crusade. Both were of pressing necessity. Perspicacious minds in every country were calling for a far-reaching reform of the Church and hoping —somewhat vaguely, it is true—for something of a return to the purity of earlier times. As far as the crusade against the Turks was concerned, events which moved daily more rapidly were enough to prove, even to the most indifferent, that it had become inescapably necessary. From then on, and for a long time to come, reform at home and crusade abroad were to occupy a prominent place in papal speeches—in speeches and bulls rather than in deeds.

Indeed, by the middle of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance was already to some extent bursting upon Italy, and the brilliance with which it was spreading was to dazzle the Papacy itself no less than the nations. Nicholas V, a first-rate scholar (he it was who founded the Vatican Library), was to be the first ‘Renaissance Pope’, and his decision to pull down the old basilica of Constantine and put up in its place a building in keeping with the spirit of the new age was a sign of his propensities and tastes. His decision, it should be added, has been criticised as an act of vandalism. The brilliance of the Renaissance was to be so intense as to blind the pope to every other ideal and lead the Holy See into a course where temporal glory and artistic splendour pushed spiritual matters into the background. Even an event as spectacular as the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) could not rouse the already lukewarm fervour of the Christian world, nor did it effectively tear the Papacy away from preoccupations primarily concerned with earthly glories—or even, more sordidly, from mere family ambitions.